


sentence by sentence

by jaekyu



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: First Meetings, Johnny Suh Being an Aquarius, Love Letters, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:06:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28429755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaekyu/pseuds/jaekyu
Summary: The five times Johnny wrote Taeyong a love letter, and other battles of the head and the heart.
Relationships: Lee Taeyong/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 14
Kudos: 76
Collections: NCTV Secret Santa 2020





	sentence by sentence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Likedeadends](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likedeadends/gifts).



> thanks to the mods for their understanding. and to my dear prompter, i hope you enjoy. merry christmas <3

_wouldn't be that hard, get along so well_   
_sentence by sentence_  
_it's a trial run, let me show you how_  
_figure I can give you true affection_  
— **FATHER JOHN MISTY**

**1.**

_Taeyong,_

_Sometimes, in the morning, when the light streams through the window in my bedroom, I think of the way the sunrise might catch in your eyes. I imagine it’d remind me of the vast skyline of a city I’m not familiar with; begging to be explored, and me, hoping to find the hidden corner of it that shows it’s true colours the most._

_There is a whole world inside of you. I would love to be able to learn about it._

_Yours,  
An admirer._

*

When Johnny first moved to Seoul from Chicago — when he was just trying to find good footing, a good foundation to build something bigger on — he figured the letter writing gig would be temporary. That he’d work at the company for a few months, and then leave on good terms once he’d found something better.

It’s been almost two years, now, and he still hasn’t left.

He likes writing the letters, most of the time. Other times they make him sad; a letter from an absent father to his adult son, begging for reconnection. A goodbye letter, where the client intends to leave and never return. A letter from a dying loved one to their family.

Johnny’s favourite thing to write is love letters. He has never been very good with his own feelings, with the list in his own head of things he’d like to say but never can. But he is very good with other people’s feelings, with the ways you might put the gut-wrenching feeling of passion and yearning and want into words.

When Johnny writes love letters he is very, very thorough. He does his research. He combs through social media profiles, he reads comments. He thinks of all the ways you might fall in love with someone, all the things you might notice if you did, and then, he falls in love with them.

Just a little bit.

For the sake of accuracy.

His clients appreciate it. And it’s never bitten him in the ass. Not yet.

On a chilly day in October, Johnny scrolls through Lee Taeyong’s instagram for the first time, and notices the way he draws all the light in a room into his eyes. He notices the scar on his face, almost the shape of a rose. He notices the slope of his nose, the pout of his lips. The way his smile projects wonder, or projects confidence, or projects mystery. Johnny wonders how this can all be the same person. Johnny wonders if, maybe, Taeyong is better at understanding his own feelings than Johnny could ever be.

Then, Johnny writes Taeyong a love letter. And then he stops thinking about him.

*

On a chilly day in October, Johnny writes Taeyong his first love letter, commissioned from Johnny by someone who wished to remain anonymous. Johnny thinks little of it afterwards. For the time being.

A week later, he goes on a date.

The girl asks him, “have you ever been in love?” She means it sweetly, playfully, and her mouth is pink with her lipstick when she says it.

Johnny doesn’t know how to explain to her the full breadth of such a contradicting truth. How to tell her: no, not really, but also yes, with so many people, over and over, every single day. So he hums around the lip of his beer glass, shrugs, and waves the waiter over to order more bread.

**2.**

_Taeyong,_

_You flit across my mind in snatches. A lightning strike that briefly illuminates everything, and then is gone too soon, leaving a darkness even more black than the one before it. I wish you would stay. I would like to learn what it’s like to know you. Are you worried it would change my opinion? I don’t think there’s a single thing I could learn about you that would dim the bright spot of your smile in my life._

_If you ever think of me — which I hope you do — you should look up at the sky. When I think of you I’ll do the same. And then, maybe, just maybe, there will be a time where we are both looking at the sky, and we are both thinking of each other._

_Yours,  
An admirer._

*

“How’d your date go last week?”

“Huh?” Johnny shakes his head, breaking free of the bubble of his own thoughts. He was reading over the second letter he wrote for Taeyong. He didn’t hear Ten approach, and now he’s leaning over the edge of Johnny’s cubicle, chin resting on his folded arms.

“Your date. With Seungah? From Marketing. How did it go?”

“Oh.” Johnny minimizes the Word Document he was writing Taeyong’s letter in. He doesn’t know why; those are not Johnny’s own feelings, committed to paper. Those are someone else’s feelings, for someone Johnny has never met before. Ten would think nothing of it, even if he read it. Ten does the same thing. “It went.”

“It went?” Ten’s brow furrows. “That’s all? You’re so boring.”

“I don’t know what you want me to tell you,” Johnny shrugs. “We went on a date. It was fine. I don’t think we’ll be going on another one.”

“You’re not interested?” Ten presses, as he always does. “Or she isn’t?”

“A little bit of both.”

Ten stands up from his perch on Johnny’s cubicle. He sighs, runs a hand through his hair. “Man, you’d think someone who writes love letters for a living would have better game. You’ve gotta start putting yourself out there.”

“I am putting myself out there!” Johnny calls after Ten, watching him disappear further and further down the office hallway.

“Uh-huh,” Ten waves Johnny off sarcastically. “Sure you are, big guy.” And then he rounds the corner into the lunch room, and Johnny can no longer see him.

*

That night, Johnny makes dinner for himself and goes to bed early.

In those brief moments between awake and asleep, when his brain is a little malleable to suggestion, or maybe just a little bit more impulsive, Johnny unplugs his phone from it’s charger and lifts it off his bedside table.

He’s not sure why he does it: plug Lee Taeyong’s instagram handle into his own search function. He’s never done this on his own personal account before — the company has burners and bots for employees to do their snooping. This feels much more dangerous. Any accidental clicks and his name will be attached to it, and then, maybe, Taeyong would end up looking at Johnny’s profile.

Johnny hasn’t quite decided if that’s a good or bad thing yet.

There’s something different, about looking at Taeyong through the illuminated light of his phone, in his own dark room, compared to when Johnny scrolls through it on his computer at work. Johnny almost wants to say it feels more personal, but that’s an oxymoron. There is nothing personal about consuming the carefully curated posts on someone’s social media. But — it’s not professional, not as Johnny lies in his own bed, so it must be personal, right? In some way, this exchange is personal, if only just barely, and even if it’s a simple passive exchange on Taeyong’s part.

Johnny wonders if this person who commissions these love letters for Taeyong, over and over, is someone Taeyong knows. Is he in one of the photos on Taeyong’s Instagram, maybe? Hiding in plain sight? It’s not uncommon for clients to wish to remain anonymous; a lot of people who commission love letters to be written are decently frightened of rejection, but repeat clients are usually working up to revealing themselves. Sometimes they do it with another letter, and Johnny gets some form of closure to the mundane storyline of a glimpse into someone’s love life. Other times, there is just never another commission for them that comes in, and Johnny is left wondering of all the ways things could have gone right, and the ways things could have gone wrong.

There are no new photos on Taeyong’s Instagram since the last time Johnny looked. Only ones he’s already seen, showing him things he’s already noticed.

Still, he looks them all over again, one by one, just in case. Just in case he missed something.

Johnny falls asleep with his phone on his chest, and he’s almost late for work the next morning, after it dies and his alarm doesn’t go off.

**3.**

_Taeyong,_

_I think the more you care for someone, the more you categorize the ways their presence could fit into your life. Easily, and without resistance, like a perfect puzzle piece. That’s the way I imagine you in my life. At the counter making coffee in the early morning, the smell of breakfast coming from somewhere. You, at the sink in the bathroom, brushing your teeth, smiling at me past the toothpaste in your mouth. You, across from me at the table in a nice restaurant, your hair tucked behind your ears. You, across from me in bed, sleepy and warm. I wonder about the differences between the way you catch sunlight and moonlight in your eyes. Will the moonlight remind me of the vastness of the ocean? Will it remind me of the unflinching infinity of the universe?_

_There are ways you exist in my heart that I cannot even begin to understand._

_I am lonely for you only._

_Yours,  
An admirer._

*

With his forehead against the cool surface of the lunchroom table, Johnny sighs and says aloud, “I think I’m in trouble.”

Around a mouthful of spinach, pear and green onion, Ten hums disapprovingly. “What have you done to yourself this time?”

And, see, Ten knows Johnny. Ten is Johnny’s best friend. His first friend he ever met in Korea, when Ten marched right up to his cubicle on his first day and introduced himself in English, and soothed some of Johnny’s anxieties. This means that Ten knows about Johnny’s proclivity to bottle things up, to let things fill until they burst.

(“It’s because you’re an Aquarius,” Ten will say, and Johnny will not know exactly what that means, but he’ll sort of understand it when Ten continues. “You feel everything so much, and you hate it.”)

All of this to say: if Johnny is not honest, Ten will see right through him. So, better just to rip that band-aid off.

“I think I’m,” Johnny sighs again, raising his head to peek at Ten with one eye. Ten is watching him, half-interested, poking through his salad. “I think I’m, like, a little bit in love with a client.”

Ten’s eyebrows disappear behind his bangs. Johnny drops his head again.

“Like,” Ten’s voice carries to Johnny’s ears, regardless of whether Johnny can see him or not, which is annoying. “Like — someone you write letters for? Someone you’re writing love letters to _someone else_ for?”

Johnny snaps up at that, waving his arms in front of him in protest. “No, no, oh god. No. I’m not an idiot,” he says, and Ten raises an eyebrow that tells him well, maybe he is. At least a little bit. “No — he’s uh — he’s someone I’ve been writing letters too. For someone else.”

“Oh, well,” Ten shrugs. “That’s still a little stupid, I think, but not nearly as stupid as the other option.”

And then, without prompting, Johnny goes into it. “His name is Taeyong,” he tells Ten. “I’ve written three letters to him so far. They were good, I think. Maybe I should try and write less good ones, though, since he doesn’t know I’m the one sending them. The last letter I wrote for him — I don’t know, something just clicked. I felt — I don’t know, you know I never know how I feel but it was — different, more loaded. Closer to my own feelings. And then I just sort of sat at my desk for thirty minutes and didn’t know what to do. Sometimes I look at his Instagram when I’m in bed at home. It’s awful.”

“Oh, honey,” Ten coos. He reaches over and pats Johnny’s hand. “It sounds like you’re a little bit in love with, yeah.”

“But I don’t _know him_ ,” Johnny insists. “I — I know what I’ve seen on his Instagram. I know what the client provided about him in the file. But that’s not — that’s not real. That’s a stranger.”

Ten shook his head, and there was this little tilt to the corner of his mouth as he spoke. “People fall in love with strangers all the time,” he said, and it was a little sad, but a little hopeful too.

*

Johnny imagines what it might be like to know Taeyong.

It feels oddly reminiscent of one of his letters, in a way that almost makes Johnny feel uncomfortable. As if he had been predicting his own future. As if he sealed his own fate by committing it to stone, or by trying to outrun it, like a Greek tragedy.

He wonders what Taeyong’s voice might sound like. He wonders what mannerisms are present enough within him to influence themselves on the people he surrounds himself with. What makes him happy? What makes him sad? What meal does he feel most confident cooking, what is his favourite colour, what does he like to drink when he goes out? What’s important to him? Does he have any pets? When was the last time he called his mom?

Broken down to it’s most basic form, every single person is made of a million little answers to a million little questions.

Johnny imagines what it might be like to be able to ask Taeyong those questions.

**4.**

_Taeyong,_

_I am worried that I love you. I am worried that I love you, and that I love you too fiercely, and that any love that comes after you will always pale in comparison. Will you take responsibility for the way you’ve ruined me?_

_No, that’s not fair. Given a chance I would do it all again. I would ask to be ruined. I would welcome it, arms open. I would beg for it. It’s not your fault. It was my fault, I bent towards you the way flowers bend towards the sun, and you only ever gave me what I asked for. Living things do not demand forgiveness from the thing that sustains it._

_I hope you’re having a good day. I hope the world is treating you the way you deserve. One day, maybe, you’ll let me treat you the way you deserve._

_I’ll be waiting, heart beating on my sleeve._

_Yours,  
An admirer._

*

Johnny rereads the letter, over and over. He wishes whoever was asking for him to keep writing this would leave him be. And yet, on the hand, he wishes they’d never stop. If they ever stopped, that might mean that, whoever this is — the person asking to remain anonymous, this person so clearly feeling things so deeply — might have told Taeyong the truth. And what if Taeyong reciprocated? What would Johnny do then? And if Taeyong rejected this person? Well, Johnny would never know, would he? He would stumble blindly through life, afraid to one day glimpse a truth he would never really be ready for.

No. It was better to keep writing them. Even if, his feelings and his clients feelings tended to blur together more and more, these days.

*

The first time Johnny sees Taeyong — in person, alive and a presence in a space that Johnny was also occupying — it hits Johnny like a freight train.

He’s not ready for it. He doesn’t think he could ever be. He had understood, subconsciously, that this could be a possibility. He knew Taeyong also lived in Seoul, had seen places he recognized in Taeyong’s instagram pictures but — but so did so many other people. Taeyong and Johnny could go years without ever finding themselves in each other’s orbit. It would be easy. It would be simple.

But it wouldn’t. It couldn’t. Not when Johnny was standing in line at the coffee shop, waiting for an Iced Americano, and he lifted his head just at the door chimed and —

And then there was Taeyong. Johnny could recognize him anywhere, on any backdrop, wearing any outfit. He had spent long enough studying the finer points of his face through pictures. And yet. And yet nothing could compare to natural sunlight filtering through the bleached strands of his hair. The sight of his hands tucked into his sleeves. His nose, red from the cold, and his cheeks that matched.

Johnny’s breath caught in his throat. How could this be happening? How, in a universe so big, in a timeline that felt so chasm-like, did destiny put him and Taeyong here at the exact same time?

The worst part is Taeyong doesn’t even know who Johnny is.

It’s happened, a few times before. Johnny has stumbled across the recipients of some of the love letters he’s written. It’s never been like this. It’s never mattered. Because Johnny has never written love letters for someone like Taeyong, he has never so closely imbued his own thoughts and feelings in words meant to be from someone else. It didn’t hurt with all those other people, to be ignored, to be walked right by without a second thought.

With Taeyong, it hurts a little.

Johnny weighs the pros and cons of speaking to him. What would he say? How could he bring about natural conversation, when everything out of his mouth would feel so loaded? It would be unfair, he thinks, to approach Taeyong on such uneven footing.

But he thinks about it. He thinks about it for a long time. How this could be enough to bridge a gap.

But he gets his Iced Americano, and he leaves the coffee shop, and he wills every nerve in his body, one by one, to not let him turn around.

**5.**

_Taeyong,_

_There’s something final about this letter, I think. Can you feel it too? I’m sorry if that makes you sad. I’d never want to make you sad. Maybe that makes you happy. And that’s okay too._

_I keep thinking about the scar beside your eye. About how it looks like a rose. Remember when we talked about flowers and how they bend towards the sun? I wonder if, one day, you and I could switch places. If I could be the sun in your solar system, and you’d be the flower bent towards it. Honestly, I’d wish that for you with anyone. I think, at the end of all this, I just hope you’ll be happy. In any way, with anyone._

_The sunset is beautiful tonight. I keep thinking about your eyes. I think about the ways photos could never do them justice, and we’d be foolish to think all of their nuances could be reflected in snatches of time committed to pixels. I speak your name like an incantation. I am a stranger to you, but you are not a stranger to me. I think about all the ways the universe might put us in the same place. I keep looking at the sky._

_I wonder if maybe you’re looking at the sky too._

_Yours,  
An admirer._

*

The last letter Johnny writes Taeyong is not a commission. He writes it because he wants to. Because he needs to. Because he can never hope to understand quite what happened between him and Taeyong, when nothing really happened at all.

He sends it off to the mailroom before he can think too long about it. He wonders what Taeyong’s face might look like when he opens it.

“Hey,” Ten nudges his shoulder from behind, messenger bag thrown over his shoulder. “Jaehyun invited me to this gallery opening tonight, you wanna come? Free finger food.”

Johnny shrugs, nods. What else is he going to do?

*

Johnny’s been to a few of these gallery openings in the past. Jaehyun hosts them like they're going out of style, with all the disposable money that sits collecting dust in his trust fund. They — well, they could be worse, all things considered.

Like, they are probably worse for Ten. Because him and Jaehyun used to date.

Johnny’s just picking a glass of champagne off the tray of a passing waiter when Jaehyun approaches him, throwing an arm over his shoulders. “Johnny,” he says, voice and expression friendly. “Ten didn’t tell me you were coming. You two still work together?”

Johnny nods. “I came because he said there’d be free food. And I didn’t feel like cooking tonight.”

Jaehyun laughs, his head thrown back a little. Johnny wonders what it must be like to be him, without a care, unperturbed like Johnny is, about how life seems to come at you fast when you least expect it. Jaehyun is not worried about falling behind.

“Let me introduce you to some people, Johnny,” Jaehyun tells him, and then he’s guiding Johnny around the room, showing him faces he doesn’t recognize and giving him names Johnny will never remember.

Until —

Until a familiar set of eyes greet Johnny. Until a familiar scar catches his eye, until a familiar, warm and open smile greets him. It’s Taeyong, somehow. Somehow, Taeyong is here with Johnny, right now, and that’s got to count for something doesn’t it? If once is coincidence, then twice is a pattern. Twice is important. Right? It has to be.

“Johnny,” Jaehyun says. “This is a friend of mine from high school. His name is Taeyong.”

Johnny’s heart pounds away in his chest, almost hard enough that he’s afraid someone might hear it. He’s afraid Taeyong might hear it.

But, he probably doesn’t. And if he does, well, he doesn’t mention it. All he does is stick his hand out, for Johnny to shake, and Johnny can’t believe this can all be happening to him right now and somehow the world is still turning.

“Hi,” Taeyong says, with a voice that sounds the way Johnny would expect, and yet somehow not what he would expect at all. “I’m Taeyong.”

It takes a second for Johnny’s brain to catch up with his body. He considers the merits of heading straight to the door. Surely, he can’t just reach out and grab Taeyong’s hand. Surely, it would do something awful, like rip a hole into the fabric of the space time continuum.

Or, maybe, none of that would happen. Maybe this can be simple. Maybe this can just be two strangers, who are meeting for the first time.

So Johnny grasps Taeyong’s hand, gentle but firm, returns his smile, and says, “hi Taeyong, I’m Johnny.”

And Taeyong smiles wider, exactly the way Johnny would expect him too, only _more_ , because this is a real moment that’s happening and Johnny is part of it. And Johnny tries not to get his hopes up, really, but —

But people fall in love with strangers all the time.

**Author's Note:**

> title and beginning quote from [True Affection](https://youtu.be/X36cTqByZ7c), specifically, by Father John Misty


End file.
